Sheriff: No relief from realignment proposal

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to modify realignment might alter the composition of Riverside County's jail population, but it wouldn't halt the flood of inmates being released before their time is up, a law enforcement official said Wednesday.

"From our initial take, it doesn’t look like it addresses overcrowding at all because it proposes a trade,” said Chief Deputy Sheriff Raymond Gregory, who oversees the county's five-jail, 3,906-bed correctional system.

Since the late 2011 debut of realignment, the shift in responsibility for newly convicted low-level felons from the state to counties has triggered the release of 10,302 inmates from Riverside County jails, Gregory said.

"As of this morning, this year we’ve done 3,312 early releases,” he said. "And we have more pending today.”

Riverside County has been scrambling to stem the tide, authorizing sending eligible inmates to state fire camps and others home on electronic ankle bracelets while awaiting trial, even as it races to add 1,250 beds through an Indio jail expansion. Sen. Bill Emmerson, R-Hemet, also sought to deliver relief through defeated legislation that would have mandated sending felons with three-year or longer sentences to prison, rather than county lockups.

On Tuesday, in releasing his revised state budget, Brown offered to let counties send offenders with lengthy sentences to state prison ---- after serving three years of their sentences in a jail. But in return, counties would have to agree to house the equivalent number of short-term offenders ---- those with less than three years to serve ---- who are currently in prison.

"It doesn't do anything for Riverside County," Sheriff Stan Sniff said in a telephone interview. "Trading one for one doesn't do much for us when we are so short of bed capacity."

A local lawmaker echoed the sheriff's concern.

"While I think it is always a good idea to allow flexibility, and we all recognize that it was not a good idea to have long-term offenders in county jails that were not designed to hold them, the one-for-one tradeoff that this proposal requires means that there will be no net relief to counties," said Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore. "I am also skeptical that (state) corrections will be willing to trade the few low-level, non-serious, low-services inmates in exchange for them. Therefore, you could have a situation where corrections is only willing to do a swap if the county agrees to take someone with a serious or violent felony conviction.

"I don’t think that this proposal is more than a minor tweak to the many problems of realignment," Melendez said via email.

However, Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach said sending longtimers to prison could prove helpful. He said county jails, because they historically held people for short periods, weren't designed to meet the myriad of health, mental health, recreation and other needs of prisoners ordered to spend many years behind bars.

"It does put your long-term prisoners in more appropriate state prison facilities," the county's top prosecutor said. "The people the county would be getting back would be short-timers. I think that's helpful. That's a positive exchange for the county."

The only problem, said Gregory, is it isn't clear what type of prisoners Riverside County would receive in return. He said the swap wouldn't necessarily translate into fewer dangerous criminals in jail.

Emmerson said that his intent, in amending his bill to improve chances of passage, was to take measures to ensure counties received only low-risk offenders through the swap.

"My proposal is a little different," Emmerson said.

"Our concern is that it will be a distraction, and that the state will be able to say it did something to fix realignment when they haven’t really done anything to address the major impacts of realignment,” Gregory said.

Even so, Zellerbach sees the governor's proposal as a positive step.

"As the governor said, it's not a perfect surgery, but he's beginning to appreciate and understand that realignment needs some modifications due to many unintended consequences," Zellerbach said.

Zellerbach noted that realignment is saddling county jails with the responsibility to house criminals with longer sentences and more violent backgrounds than had been anticipated.

It was originally thought counties wouldn't be asked to house any would-be state prisoner for longer than three years, but Riverside County jails have received felons ordered to serve longer than a decade. And even though counties are only supposed to take felons convicted of nonviolent crimes and offenses that aren't sex crimes, many have a violent past.

Adding to worries, Riverside, Alameda and Fresno counties recently were sued by inmate advocates over their alleged lack of health and mental health services.

"I don’t think it (Brown's plan) will eliminate the lawsuits that the Prison Law Office is already filing against county jails," Melendez said.

On the other hand, Zellerbach said, it is encouraging that someone in Sacramento is paying attention.

"The Legislature, at least for the last year and a half, has been unwilling to modify realignment in any manner," he said.